Music Disc Reviews

Those the Brokes Astralwerks Music ••½ Sound ••½

How you react to the Magic Numbers' second CD probably depends on your rock/roll belief system.

Optimists who were energized by "Love Me Like You," "Forever Lost," and other power-popping tracks from the London quartet's 2005 self-titled debut will point to the follow-up's finest moments - "This Is a Song" and "Take a Chance," where the fast tempos showcase secret-weapon Michele Stodart's jet-propelled bass - and claim that the promise is still there.

Pessimists who have viewed them as just another British buzz-of-the-month band will no doubt focus on such frightfully sluggish, inexplicably long noodlings as "Undecided" and "Slow Down (The Way It Goes)" and deduce that whatever Michele's songwriter brother Romeo may have had to say in the first place, he's now said.

Me? I'm on the fence with crossed fingers - hoping that the Magic Numbers aren't up before they've barely begun counting.

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